The door won't open. What did it sound like?

If you heard a bang

A single loud crack from the garage, sometime in the last few days, is a torsion spring breaking. Look at the shaft above the closed door. A healthy spring is one continuous coil from end to end. A broken one shows a clean gap, usually about two inches wide, where the steel let go.

With the spring gone, the opener is trying to lift the door’s full weight alone. It can’t. Most units will raise the door a few inches and then set it back down, which is the motor protecting itself from burning out.

Stop running the opener. Every attempt grinds the drive gear against a load it was never sized for, and a $220 spring job becomes a spring job plus a gear kit. This one is a call, not a project: spring replacement takes a pro about an hour, and the winding bars involved are the reason it should be a pro.

If the opener hums

A hum or buzz with no movement usually means the motor is running but nothing is turning it into lift. On chain-drive units, the common culprit is a stripped drive gear, a nylon part that wears out on schedule. You can sometimes confirm it by smell: freshly stripped nylon has a faint burnt odor near the motor head.

The other hum comes from a door that is frozen to the slab. Greenfield gets a handful of mornings every winter where meltwater refreezes under the bottom seal overnight, especially on driveways that drain toward the garage. Break the ice seal along the bottom edge with gentle pressure and the door lifts normally. Nothing is broken.

If there was no sound at all

Silence means no power is reaching the opener, and the fix is often free.

1. Try the wall button, not the remote. If the wall button works, the remote needs a battery or reprogramming.
2. Check the outlet the opener hangs from. Garage circuits share GFCI protection with outdoor outlets in most houses built since the 90s, and one wet extension cord can trip the whole run. Press reset on any outlet with buttons, including the ones outside.
3. Look at the opener’s light. No light at all after the resets points at the unit’s transformer or logic board, which is a repair visit, not a replacement by default.

The manual override, used correctly

Every opener has a red release cord. Pulled with the door DOWN, it disconnects the door from the motor so you can lift it by hand and at least get the car out.

Two cautions. If the door is very heavy to lift once released, the spring is broken and the door is dead weight; set it down and step away. And never pull the release while the door is stuck part way up, because without the motor holding it, a door with a weak spring can fall.

What to say when you call

The sound (bang, hum, or nothing), whether the door lifts by hand, and roughly where you are in the county. Those three facts usually produce a price on the phone and the right parts on the truck: the pricing page shows the ranges before you even dial.